European Parliament election, 1979

European Parliament election, 1979

7–10 June 1979 1984 →
Members elected →
All 410 seats to the European Parliament 206 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	63%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Ernest Glinne Egon Klepsch James Scott-Hopkins Party SOC EPP ED Leader's seat Belgium (French) Germany Hereford and Worcester Last election N/A N/A N/A Seats won 113 107 64 Seat change N/A N/A N/A Percentage 27.6% 26.1% 15.6%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Giorgio Amendola Martin Bangemann Christian de La Malène Party COM ELDR EPD Leader's seat Central Italy Germany France Last election N/A N/A N/A Seats won 44 40 22 Seat change N/A N/A N/A Percentage 10.7% 9.8% 5.4%
Majority Leader-Elect SOC

SOC

The 1979 European elections were parliamentary elections held across all 9 (at the time) European Community member states. They were the first European elections to be held, allowing citizens to elect 410 MEPs to the European Parliament, and also the first international election in history.

Seats in the Parliament had been allocated to the states according to population, and in some cases were divided into constituencies, but members sat according to political groups.

The Treaty of Rome which established the Communities specified that the European Parliament must be elected by universal suffrage using a common voting system. The Council of the European Union was responsible for setting up the elections but it had procrastinated. As a stop-gap measure, members were appointed to the Parliament by the member states from their own national parliaments, as they had done since the Common Assembly. The Parliament was unhappy with this and threatened to take the Council to the European Court of Justice. The Council eventually agreed to elections and the first European Parliament elections were held in 1979 after proposals were put forward in the mid 1970s. The issue of a common voting method was left undecided, and even to this day the voting methods vary from member state to member state, although all have used some form of proportional representation since 1999.

The campaigns varied. The former Social Democrat German Chancellor Willy Brandt took an international campaign to France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to boost the Socialist group. On the other hand, the former Prime Minister of France Jacques Chirac used the election to gauge his popularity against the then-President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, in anticipation of a presidential bid in 1981.

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